WTA AT NOVA SBE’s FUTURE OF UNIVERSITIES CONFERENCE
On April 30, 2026, Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE) hosted Future of Universities at its Carcavelos campus. Researchers, faculty, industry professionals, policymakers, and students came together to examine how artificial intelligence and wider social, technological, and economic changes are reshaping higher education. WTA CEO Jeremy Kahn was invited to take part in the dialogue, and Western Technology Alliance was honored to be part of this timely and important conference.
Organized by Nova SBE and NOVA Medical School, in collaboration with the Digital Data Design Institute (D³) at Harvard, the conference explored how universities can adapt while continuing to serve people and society. See the Nova SBE event page and watch the conference video.
AI and the evolving role of universities
The program opened with AI Won’t Wait: How Will Universities Keep Up? Harvard Business School Professor Karim Lakhani joined Francisco Veloso, Pedro Santa Clara, and Neha Shah for a discussion moderated by Nova SBE Professor Nadim Habib.
A central question was how universities can respond as AI changes the way people access information, conduct research, and work. The discussion underscored that universities have an opportunity to put greater emphasis on the distinctly human parts of learning: critical judgment, curiosity, mentorship, and the ability to connect ideas and apply them responsibly.
The campus as a “living lab”
In Research & the Campus as a Living Lab: Learning by Doing, Testing and Failing, Ikhlaq Sidhu, Pedro Ferreira, Ashley V. Whillans, and Nathalie Crutzen considered how universities can test new approaches within their own communities and operations.
A campus can be more than a place where learning takes place. It can also be a setting for piloting ideas, observing their effects, and refining them. Partnerships with industry and other organizations can strengthen this work by connecting academic insight with practical challenges and helping promising ideas move toward implementation.
From degrees to lifelong learning
The session From Degrees to Lifelong Platforms: Credentials, Subscriptions, Partnerships featured Céline Abecassis-Moedas, Enno Siemsen, Manuela Veloso, and Margarida Uva. Their discussion addressed how universities might support learning across a person’s working life, as technologies and workforce needs continue to change.
Flexible programs, executive education, shorter credentials, and employer partnerships can give people more ways to update their skills over time. This points to a broader view of higher education: a continuing resource people can return to at different stages of their lives and careers.
A conversation that continues
Across the sessions, a shared idea emerged: universities will need to connect disciplines, experiment with new models, and help people keep learning as the world changes. Future of Universities did not set out a single blueprint for higher education. Instead, it brought diverse perspectives together to explore what universities can become and how they can remain relevant and impactful.
For WTA, these conversations resonate with a challenge organizations face across sectors: meaningful technology transformation depends not only on the tools themselves, but also on how people use them, how new approaches are tested, and how learning keeps pace with change.
